


The Abyss (A Brighter Place)

by ardett



Category: All the Bright Places - Jennifer Niven
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Drowning, F/M, Major character death - Freeform, Spoilers, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 19:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5755300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardett/pseuds/ardett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Abyss (A Brighter Place)

**Author's Note:**

> Something I wrote to handle the ending of _All the Bright Places._ (I don't think anyone is going to read this because it has basically no fan base on Ao3 but whatever.)

**FINCH  
I stopped counting. (I am past Awake.)**

I stare into the Blue Hole, depths countless miles deep, yawning, gaping beneath me. In _Beyond the Good and Evil_ , Friedrich Nietzsche said, _“When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”_  
I feel it looking back at me. Looking, gazing, and calling. Beckoning.  
When I choose to come here, I knew why. This is where I will die. It sounds different now that I’m here.  
The Asleep is trying to creep up on me. Who was it who took off my clothes and stepped into the water? Was it me? But for once, me and the Asleep agree. The water is the answer. I will never be Asleep (or Awake or anything) again. It feels satisfying.  
And terrifying.  
And wrong.  
And right, oh, it feels so right.  
It’s around now that I start deciding which breath will be my last.  
Last time I was here, I was with Violet. I almost feel like I should have died then, while she was here. Maybe it would have been more respectful, maybe I owed that to her. Maybe it would have killed her.  
Maybe this will kill her.  
I take my last breath.  
Under the water, it’s calm. The only thing out of place is my heart, wildly pumping blood. I wonder if I’ll be able to hear it slow.  
The water presses on me from all sides, pushes all the pieces of me into one solid being. I am complete, whole. I am me. I am together. All the pieces of me will die together.  
My legs kick me deeper and this time, I don’t stop for Violet. The dark nothing, the bottomless black calls me and I answer. Last time, I looked back. Is this the kind of thing you’re allowed to look back for?  
Behind me, the light is almost gone, swallowed by the layers of water between us. I wonder if I would make it back if I tried.  
I won’t though.  
It’s too late for that. I won’t go back just to be labeled and stripped down to a disorder and what medication someone as messed up as me needs to take.  
(Deeper.)  
I won’t go back for myself. I won’t even go back for Violet. The water is the only place I’m always Awake, I’m always me. Around her, I’m broken and shards of me will cut her to pieces. I won’t do that to her.  
My lungs have started to burn. Either I’ll involuntarily take a breath or I’ll go unconscious and then take a breath. I think it will be unconsciousness first. My vision is already blackening along the edges.  
After so, so long of thinking of how and why to kill myself, I can’t decide if this feels like a completion. It doesn’t feel like an ending, it just feels like the next step. Maybe my fingers aren’t stretching out into a never ending well, maybe they really are stretching out to another world. Maybe I’ve already crossed into the next world and if I just keep swimming, I’ll break the surface again on the other side.  
I think of Violet. The thing about the water is that it lets you think about whatever you want and blocks out the rest. No background noise of my mother and sisters crying, my father screaming, Roamer calling me a freak. Just Violet and her love and my love for her. I don’t regret doing this, I can’t. I know I have to. I just hope she can forgive, and maybe eventually forget, me.  
Really, I don’t want her to forget me. I want her to remember me as me, not the pieces of me. I want her to remember the me that lived every moment as his last and wasn’t afraid of anything. Although I’m not sure that was me at all.  
Part of me is starting to become desperate but I let the water silence that too. The quiet around me deafens me as I fade.  
As it disappears my feet, my legs, my hands, my arms, the water changes around me.  
It is gold, flowing. It holds me safe, safe from the world, safe from myself. It burns molten down my throat and I welcome it.  
I let it take me to a brighter place.

End.


End file.
